Dungeons & Dragons Online

Category: News & Updates

On Christmas Eve Eve (December 23rd 2016) I’m going to do an extended live steam on twitch.tv. I will be starting at around 9am (maybe earlier) and I will go until 3am or 4am on December 24th. I would do a complete 24 hour stream but it being Christmas Eve when I end I don’t want to end up sleeping through my plans that I have with my family.

I will be attempting to finish my bard character that I started in my last 24 hour stream. I’m currently at level 12 and I think I should be able to hit level 20 by the time the stream ends. I have acquired some more DDO Point (formally Turbine point codes) codes to give away as well. You can find my stream here.

Speaking of formally Turbine point codes, if you haven’t heard DDO is moving away from Turbine and going to an indie company Standing Stone Games. You can read more here.

I think (and am hoping) that is will be good for the players. Without the giant corporation looming over their head I think the team can do things that make sense for the game and less for the pocketbook. That might bring more people to the game which in turn will be good for their pocketbook which honestly is what this is about. I think the fact that WB/Turbine put their pockets first is what was slowing down the game. In the end though this game is a business and if the business isn’t making money it won’t be around too long. But this is only my opinion and the facts could be totally different and I could be completely wrong about Turbine and WB.

On Saturday November 26, 2016 I will attempt to do a 24 live stream of DDO on Twitch. I’m going to start at 9am CST and try to end Sunday morning at 9am CST. It will be my first attempt do to a 24 hour stream so I’m not going to guarantee I can make it the whole way. My goal is to TR a character and get to level 20 before the 24 hours is up. I have a couple of collaborators so it’ll be easier then if I were to try to solo it. I will be on Argonnessen and I will try to have LFM/LFG up the whole time to try to get the party full. It will probably be a ZURG fest so if you join be prepared.

I have acquired some Turbine Point codes to give away during the stream. Most I will give away on Twitch but I will give a few away in game too. I haven’t figured out the mechanism exactly but it’s in the works.

This is old news but we have a new crafting system in DDO. I really didn’t like it at first. I was browsing the forums and I found a crafting planner. Having that planner makes me like crafting a lot more. I’m still saddened that some of my old named gear is not as good as what I can craft but saying that makes me feel like an old man. “Back in my day blah blah blah.”

After my rant about not finding a reason to play DDO anymore I decided to do something about it. I started a new character on a new server that I don’t have any connections on and I’m streaming on http://www.twitch.tv/force081 whenever I play that character. I’m playing on Thelanis and my goal is to get to level 20 soloing and pugging pretty much all the way. I’m also posting the videos on youtube because Twitch deletes my videos after 10 days and I want to keep them longer. (there might be a way to keep them longer on Twitch but I’m not sure)

So far it’s been pretty fun. I’m finding a nice little challenge with gearing as I go and not having a lot of platinum. I actually have to look at all the end reward gear and pick something I like.

I’ve got a playlist going which you can check out here. You can also check out my first video below!

So, anyone who’s read this website at all knows that in the past year I’ve not been posting much. I’ve tried to post at least once a month so as not to be taken off DDO’s official fansite page and up until last month I have been posting enough. I was looking at the fan page list to see what other people are writing and noticed that this site was unlisted for some reason. I reached to Cordovan on twitter and got no response back. The terms & agreements explicitly say that Turbine has the right to remove a site from the list with no explanation to the fansite administrators. I’m trying to figure out what I did to become unlisted. Maybe I didn’t post within a 30 day time frame. Accept for last month, which was after I found out I was removed, I know that I posted at least once within each month but maybe it was after 30 days. Maybe I posted something that the Turbine fanpage administrator deemed as defamatory. I have before been critical of things in DDO but I would hardly consider them defamatory. In March I posted about how I was going to start streaming on Twitch and that post was featured on the official DDO Chronicle. I don’t get it. Do they want to help promote me or not?

Aside from being taken down from the fansite list I want to write about why I haven’t been posting much. The real reason is; I haven’t been playing much. I’ve been working a lot lately and when I do get a chance to log on to DDO there aren’t many LFMs up(or LFGs? Which one is it?) The ones that are up either already in the quest too long for me to get anything out of it or I join and it doesn’t fill. If I put a “Looking for More/Group” it doesn’t fill either. Sometimes I get a person to join and they immediately jump in the quest and start it. That really annoys me to no end! At least ask. The reason I put up a group is because I want a GROUP! (I guess 2 people could be considered a group but still…) So after a half hour or so I’ll log off and play a different game. Lately my patience for waiting has gotten smaller and smaller. I’ll log on, see that nothing is going on and log off and start playing a different game. It could be just bad timing but I’m not so sure about that. I have a level 144 guild that I’m the leader of but the members are starting to take breaks too. We’re down to 4 active people now, and I’m hardly considered active. I would just recruit more people but I’m pretty stingy when recruiting. I have to get to know someone before I invite them and it’s hard to get to know anyone if I’m not playing much. (I have some gripes about some the “top” player base on my server Argonnessen but I don’t think I wanna get into that. The DDO administrators already don’t like me for some reason I don’t need to burn other bridges too which I might have just done with this sentience)

My wife and I pay for VIP for 3 months at a time and it runs out the beginning of June. She still plays a bunch so I’m sure we’ll renew hers but I’m not so sure about mine. I started being a VIP a few months after DDO became Free to Play. I’ve bought 2 expansions at greater then base level and I’ve bought 2 airships by buying turbine points and astral shards. One of my characters looks strikingly (randomly generated) like the person who taught me how to play Dungeons and Dragons. He passed away right before DDO went Free to Play. He played Final Fantasy Online and I’m sure he would have loved DDO! I genuinely love this game still and have invested too much money and time (and nostalgia)to completely give it up. I’ll keep logging on to see if anything is going on until my VIP runs out. Maybe by then I will re-find the joy in playing and it will give me a reason to renew VIP again.

A member of my guild on the recently came back from an extended break and he said that he started streaming on twitch.tv. Check him out, he’s at twitch.tv/JohnBigboote. Well, monkey see monkey doo. I am now streaming on twitch as well. I received my tax return last month and updated my computer a bit with a new graphics card(mid to high end quality as of 3 years ago which is good enough for DDO) and improved my internet speeds. Check me out at twitch.tv/force081. My work schedule is all over the place so I don’t have any dedicated times to play but I will probably stream when I think I’m going to be doing any thing interesting. Johnbigboote and I are going to be tandem streaming sometimes too. We are going to try to figure out fun things to do like races or soloing a “side” of a quest; things like that. A bit of a warning, we tend to have adult language, tell some crass jokes and listen to heavy metal music so if you’re not into that you might want to check this out. Check us out though, I think it’ll be a lot of fun!

On to DDO stuff. I myself have been taking a small break from DDO until recently so I’ve been missing a lot of the 10 year event. Stupid Steam had a sale last month. But I’m back now. I chose items with my 10th anniversary token thingie for all 14 of my characters. Some characters got something useful but some not so much. I still have a raiders box on a few toons that I don’t play much so the CitW weapons weren’t needed on those. I haven’t gotten to try the party event quest/challenge outside of Party Crashers yet and neither has JohnBigboote. Maybe we’ll stream it. I doubt there is enough time left in the event to get any good gear but it should be fun.

I haven’t tried a Gnome yet but then again I haven’t played a druid yet so I guess you could say that I’m a little behind on trying the updates. The plus to intelligence might come in handy for an int rogue so I might give that a shot on one of my next lives. Last time I played I noticed the little slider bar next to peoples names that adjust their voice volume. THAT IS AWESOME!!!! I’ve been looking for something like that for years. Although it’d be nice if there was a way to lock it. (if there is a way forgive my ignorance) I was trying to heal a party member and in my haste to click his name I turned his volume all the way up! It wasn’t a game breaker but it was a bit annoying. I can imagine doing the same thing and turning the volume all the way down and not noticing and end up missing some pertinent information.

I’m not usually a lag complainer but the lag has gotten pretty bad at certain points. I was doing a VON 5 and I lagged right off into the lava. Luckily I was able to /stuck out of there but if I hadn’t done it quick I would have been stuck there until I released out. You know how fast VON 5 runs can go. Maybe I would have been lucky and someone with dimension door would come grab me but probably not. The Argonnessen server came down earlier for a restart and to do some maintenance so I hope that was an effort to fix it.

DDO is celebrating 10 years! This weekend and tentatively thru the month of March there will be a series of events. Specifically Risia, Festivult, Crystal Cove and Midwinter Festival.

On Monday February 29th the servers will go down for Update 30. The most notable thing coming from the update is GNOMES! When the release notes are…. released, I will link to them here.

A long time ago I noticed the hireling vendor in Gianthold was named Raissa Gnomeslayer. I thought she might have did a great job slaying all the Gnomes in Eberron that there were no more. She is about to get a whole lot more gnomes to kill. It would be funny if she had higher prices for gnomes or won’t talk to them. I’m sure this won’t happen though. Her name could also mean that she is a Gnome and that she slays things. The only reason we can’t tell that she is a gnome is her mask hides her face. In that case DDO has had gnomes the whole time!

Producer Severlin released his producers letter and it he talks about the successes of 2015 and what is to come in 2016. One of the successes he mentions is the new random loot generation system. I myself am not a big fan of the new system yet. It almost seems too random to me if that makes any sense and some of the effects seem way to powerful for the minimum level of the item. It also can produce some items with too many effects(one or more of which is useless). One of my favorites that kind of fits into both of those problems are the “Murderous Gloves of Heal.” What kind of maniac craftsman in the Dungeons and Dragons world makes that item and lets it go into the world? If it was a mistake he would obviously destroy it to reclaim some of the materials. The new system also puts some of the old epic gear effects to shame(although the old epic gear has more on it then the new loot and it can create redundancies that are hard to slot for). I’m hoping with more time newer, more useful stuff will be on the auction house to help with slotting.

One thing I am really looking forward to is the new crafting system scheduled for Update 30. I think that the new effects will be very useful if created by the player. My hope is they just expand upon and improve the old crafting levels and not just add “Epic Cannith Crafting” or some junk like that. I don’t want to have to start completely over with my crafting levels.

Gnome concept image by Turbine

Another thing that is coming down the pipeline for update 30 is the Gnome race as well as a Gnome Iconic. I’m really hoping to see a Dwarf Iconic with this update but I guess I’ll have to wait for that, if it is even planned at all.

When update 30 is released on Lamannia in the coming weeks please log on and do some testing. The more people test the less bugs we will have on official release to the live servers. The last thing we want are the live servers to unexpectedly go down for maintenance because so many bugs go thru in the update!

Update 29 was released today (December 17, 2015). It was live for a few hours then the game servers were taken down. I didn’t get a chance to log on while it was up but from what I understand from reading the forums, among other things, the new random loot generation was messed up pretty bad.

If you’re looking for something DDO related and you haven’t looked yet you can read the release notes here.

I was surprised when I read that they were going release it this early. From previous development cycles I thought that update 29 would be released after Christmas. I could be wrong, because I’m not a game developer, but it feels like Turbine was rushed to release this for some reason. I know the devs are working hard to get this fixed so I’d like to thank them and I’m sure they’ll get us back to banishing demons and devils in no time.

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Last month gnomes were announced as officially coming to DDO and while I was perusing Youtube the other day I found this video that I thought was slightly relevant. It’s a bit old and it’s referring to when D&D 4th edition was released how Gnomes were upgraded from monster to player character but it’s worth a watch.

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